MARK BRODIE: Last month on The Show, we told you about two Arizona properties that had been listed on 2025’s version of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list. Since that time, one of them has actually been moved.
In mid-May, the May Hicks Curtis House in Flagstaff was relocated to a temporary site. It had been on land that was in the process of being developed and was at risk of being torn down.
May Hicks Curtis is known as the "Betsy Ross of Arizona" for her role in creating the state flag. Her house dates back to 1913 and was built adjacent to two boarding houses operated by her family that likely served travelers along Route 66.
With me to talk about what's next for the house is Lauren Clementino, Flagstaff’s heritage preservation officer. She says in a best-case scenario, it could be a couple of years before the house is on a permanent spot and ready for public use.
Before we get there, Lauren, what is the current status of this house? It sounds like there’ve been some fairly recent changes.
LAUREN CLEMENTINO: Yes, yeah! The big news is on May 13, we moved the house from its original location on South Leroux Street in Flagstaff to a temporary location at one of our city of Flagstaff public works yards, where we'll be able to sort of securely store it for the time being until a permanent location is identified.
So that, as you can imagine, was a fairly big process. You know, several months in the making of working with our contractor to get the house ready to move and go through all of the traffic control, permitting etc. to get the house on wheels on the truck and get it across town.
BRODIE: Yeah, well, so what's the process now in terms of finding a permanent location? Where do you stand on that?
CLEMENTINO: That is the big work ahead of us. So, this next phase is really going to be first doing some stabilization work. Because we do anticipate that it'll be a little while before we have a permanent location identified and prepped to move the house to. So, in the meantime, we want to make sure we're stabilizing the building, so building fabric doesn't deteriorate any further, and it's going to be safe in storage.
So we're going to be working on that and doing a condition assessment to sort of scope out all of what's going to be needed to do a full rehab of the building. And then we can start planning, and budgeting, etc. for that. And then the other side of it is yes, identifying where the building is going to go and what the future use should be.
And so, we've had some preliminary talks, but really that's going to be the next big focus point is having more robust conversations and getting more stakeholder public feedback on what potential, again, locations and uses could be.
BRODIE: Sure. So, how much work do you think needs to be done to the house? And, and I wonder if any of that work is maybe new after this move, if anything was jostled or revealed anything that maybe you didn't know about that now you have to work on, maybe even before it moves to its final location.
CLEMENTINO: So there were some things that we did know ahead of time, but — and you're absolutely right — a few things that we uncovered as we went.
So, if you can imagine what the house looks like originally. It was covered in stucco, and the stucco actually went all the way down over the foundation to the dirt outside the house. ... Yeah, and of course, in order to move it, we left the old foundation behind. So we'll, of course, need a new foundation. But in some ways, that was good because there was an addition on the house. So the two different types of foundations that were causing some structural damage as the house settled over time. So this will actually be a great opportunity to improve the foundation and situation moving forward.
But in order to get the house off the foundation, we had to take some of the bottom bit of stucco off, which did expose a little bit of the building fabric, so we could take a look underneath. And we did find that there was some termite damage, so that is one thing we're going to need to deal with. But, otherwise, we already knew there were some settling issues and other things.
And when we acquired the house, we had one broken window that is currently boarded up and we knew we were going to need to deal with it. And we also need to replace one of the doors. So, there were a few things like that. And then the other major thing with moving the house is we had to remove the chimneys.
So definitely we know we have to deal with those things, and I'm sure we'll uncover more. Those are some of the things we know about, and we might find others.
BRODIE: I mean, as one does when you start digging into a house, especially a house this old.
CLEMENTINO: Exactly, yes.
BRODIE: So, I'm curious, like from your perspective, how significant is this house to Arizona history? I mean, obviously May Hicks Curtis, known as the "Betsy Ross of Arizona," lots of important things happened in that house. But from your perspective, you're a historian, how important is this particular house to our state's history?
CLEMENTINO: Yeah, you mentioned some of the big things — like her connection to Arizona’s state flag. In addition to that ... in Flagstaff history, she was very involved in a number of organizations here. She's a founding member of our Flagstaff Women's Club. She's also a very early graduate of NAU when it was the Northern Normal School of Arizona in 1905.
... There's a long list of reasons why May is significant to us locally here and then especially with the connection to the flag story significant at that larger level. And part of why this house specifically versus the boarding houses is most connected and embodies her story is that this is where she lived for many decades, and she built the house. It was designed, built for her. And she lived there for, I believe over 40 years. ... Between the three properties, this is the one that she resided in the longest and is most connected with her history. So, we're really hoping it can help tell that story.
And one other interesting piece about it is that this is an interesting example of a more vernacular architectural style. When folks walk by this building, it doesn't jump out at them as this very high-style architectural example worthy of architectural significance. And that's OK and that's actually also very important to preserve all kinds of architectural history.
So, it is interesting, a lot of folks see those high-style examples and think of historic preservation in terms of those buildings, but that is one of the interesting things about this building. This is where an everyday businesswoman lived in Flagstaff.
BRODIE: Well, it almost sounds like some buildings are historically significant because of the architecture, because of the building itself. This one sounds like it's more historically significant because of what happened inside of it.
CLEMENTINO: Absolutely, it is very significant because of its association with May Hicks, and her story, and this being the best representation and the building most associated with her.
BRODIE: All right, that is Lauren Clementino, Heritage Preservation officer with the City of Flagstaff. Lauren, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
CLEMENTINO: Thank you, Mark.
